I am a new ubuntu user and after accidentally formatting the boot partition I can't get it back to work. Here is some more info:
I was trying to format an sd card from the terminal and I accidentally may have formatted the partition which boots ubuntu. Now my computer goes directly to the BIOS settings and doesn't load the operating system. Under Boot tab in the Bios there is:
- Launch PXE OpROM [Disabled]
- Boot Option Priorities
- Boot Option #1 [ubuntu (Drive not ....]
- Boot Option #2 [ubuntu (Drive not ....]
- Boot Option #3 [Windows Boot Manag....]
(I had removed windows long time ago.)
This is how I tried to solve the problem so far:
I created an ubuntu boot usb drive and was able to start the machine from the USB (luckily all the data was still there). I then tried installing ubuntu again alongside the old ubuntu. The installation completed successfully but the machine still won't boot without a USB drive.
I then followed the instructions in the thread for CreateBootPartitionAfterInstall
I tried running Boot-Repair but kept getting an error for a missing flag "bios_grub". So in gparted I changed the flag for my /dev/sda1 to bios_grub (it was "boot" before that - not sure if this was a right thing to do but couldn't run boot-repair without it). Here is what my partitions look like:
http://eagle1.american.edu/~gp9804a/ubuntu_gparted.png
I ran boot-repair successfully but still to no avail - machine still wont' boot without the usb drive.
I then tried the advanced options in boot-repair and under the GRUB Location tab I checked "Seperate /boot partition sda1"
This also apparently went well and I received a successful boot-repair message at the end. The only problem there was that it couldn't run some updates on dev/sda6 and it instructed me to enable updates on the partition (which I have no idea how to do and thought that this was tangential to the main problem anyway). However, after restart I was back to the same problem - going straight to BIOS and still no boot.
The url from (the last) boot-repair is this:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/6939109/
I am now at a loss on what to do and how to get my machine back up. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated